How Big Are Video Files?

Does size matter?

Does size matter? Indeed it does when it comes to video. 

There’s no denying that video is one of the main currencies of communication these days: social media feeds, video conferencing/training, video marketing, video calling, live streaming, and many more business functions. 

Video file size

Hand-in-hand with this explosion in the popularity of video is the challenge of working with video: in particular, video file sizes, which depend on a number of factors, including:

• Length: the longer the video, the bigger the file size (depending on visual effects, animation, etc.);
• Resolution: the number of pixels (individual points of colour) that make up the image displayed on a screen;
• Codec (short for ‘coder-decoder’): used to reduce the size of media files without significant loss in quality, so they’re more manageable in terms of storage, transmission and playback;
• Bitrate: the amount of data used to encode or store audio/video content per unit of time;
• Frame rate: the number of individual images (frames) displayed per second in a video.

How big are video files?

In addition to the list above of variables, if you include visual effects or animation in your videos, they increase the file size. But, here’s a broad guide to video file sizes:

How Overcast can help

We know it’s hard to wave goodbye to processes you are familiar with that have served you. In bygone eras, we all saved our video files on hard drives. But remember the stress of scrolling through hours of footage on those drives looking for a shot that you know you filmed but cannot find or the frustration of wasted editing time while the video buffered/lagged? Those days are gone!

The cloud is the secret sauce to managing video effectively. Key elements of our service include:

1. For large files that are captured on a hard drive, we use an accelerator to upload them to our cloud.
2. For streams in 2K, 4K and larger, we capture them directly in the cloud with our live ingest solution, so there’s no need to upload at all.
3. For those who want to edit large files, Overcast has a high-performance cloud-edit solution that allows editors to work directly with originals.

Sound good? We can save you oodles of time and money. 

Distributing your videos

You would almost need a maths degree to be able to count the number of distribution platforms available today. Many of those distribution platforms require their own format, so what’s the best way to manage that? 

No problemo!! Overcast supports more than 1,200 different formats, so no matter where you want to publish your content (TV, your website, YouTube, Facebook HD, Kindle, etc.), we have it covered.

Let us help you

Whether you need an off-the-shelf product or a tailored-just-for-you solution, we would be delighted to work with you. Why not request a free demo of our platform to see how we can help you to make video management effortless!